Bleacher Report - Articles by Kartikeya Date

Gilchrist, Ponting, and The Racism Accusation at Sydney

Kartikeya Date — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 08:53:05 -0500

I guess it is not remarkable that books by players who participated in the series in Australia earlier this year discuss the events surrounding the Sydney Test Match in detail. What is remarkable, is the element of revelation which is implicit in these offerings. Take Ricky Ponting's Captain's Diary for that tour, as excerpted here on Cricinfo. Ponting writes,

"On the night after we made our on-field report about Harbhajan, I had a phone conversation with a senior member of the Indian touring party, who asked me straight to drop the complaint."

Why is this news? Why is this some sort of conspiratorial revelation? Didn't the Indian Captain, Anil Kumble, make it clear that he himself (there can't be a more "senior member" of the side than him—he was captain!—unless Ponting is referring to the Indian team management) spoke to Ponting after the incident?

"On the other events so far, I can only say that I spoke to Ricky that day and having heard from Bhajji and Sachin before that, I was convinced that there had neither been any racist remark made, nor intended. I asked Harbhajan why he started it and he said he hadn’t, Symonds did and goaded, he responded. But he insisted he made no racist comment.

Ricky, meanwhile, was just not willing to listen, nor see my point. When I offered to apologise as Bhajji’s skipper, it was only to smooth things over. At no stage did I admit that he had made a racist remark, in fact, I said he had not.

Unfortunately, these days, when someone apologises, it is seen as either a sign of weakness or an admission of guilt. I am neither unnerved nor are we guilty. In the larger interests of the game, if an apology could help build bridges and smooth things over, then it is better made than left unsaid because of egos."

If Ponting did mention this conversation in his published diary, why is his subsequent conversation with a "senior member" significant? Is it because this "senior member" was ambiguous about Harbhajan Singh's guilt?

What seems to emerge from Gilchrist and Ponting (as publicity for their books) is this apparent belief that Australia were screwed at Sydney, never mind the ridiculous inquiry conducted by Procter (which even Judge Hansen damned with faint praise in his final judgement).

The whole "don't do it again" side of this episode is the most bizarre aspect of it. This allegation of "racism" is bothersome, because it is serious. Does something become a racist taunt simply because Andrew Symonds says it is racist? Let's assume for a moment that Harbhajan Singh did call Andrew Symonds a monkey.

Is Symonds's association of that term with racism the fault of the members of Harbhajan Singh's race? Isn't there a difference between Harbhajan calling him a monkey and a white man calling him a monkey? Would it be the same if a fellow Australian with a West Indian heritage called him a monkey? Would that be racist too? Is Symonds claiming some sort of equivalency between Sikhs and the white man?

These are extremely loaded questions, and very complex ones. I do not claim to have an answer to these questions. Neither am i suggesting that simple yes or no answers to these questions suffice.

But the one thing that has bothered me about the whole Sydney affair (as aspect which I had refrained from writing about so far) is the fact that everybody seems to accept with absolute certainty that Harbhajan Singh calling Andrew Symonds a monkey would be a racist comment.

And so what if Symonds had explained to Harbhajan Singh once before that being called a monkey was especially offensive because it held racist connotations for Symonds? Doesn't the fact that Symonds actually had to explain this to Harbhajan Singh itself suggest that he understood that Harbhajan probably didn't intend it in a racial way the first time?

Is it seriously the Australian claim, that something Harbhajan said in the heat of the moment, was absolutely and deliberately an intended racist epithet, simply because Symonds may have told him it was so? Doesn't such a claim completely trivialize the serious and offensive nature of racist behaviour—where racial epithets become racial epithets, precisely because they carry with them all the antecedent hostility of one race towards another?

Is it seriously the Australian claim that the Sikhs of Ludhiana, Punjab bore any meaningful and consequential (in any serious socio-political sense) racial hostility towards Australians of West Indian descent?

As far as the incident itself goes, isn't there also the small matter of an agreement between Symonds and Harbhajan that they would not talk to each other on the field? Didn't Symonds himself break that agreement first?

Even this discussion on this post, couched as it has been in one question mark after another, is one which i make with a great deal of trepidation, precisely because i consider it to be an absolutely serious charge, not merely because it was made so publicly about an Indian cricketer, but because as someone with some experience of living in cosmopolitan, multicultural environments all my life (just like many of you readers), I am especially mindful, and interested in understanding the idea of racism and prejudice.

I am not for a moment disputing any assertion to the effect that the term, if used, was offensive. I am merely questioning whether it was racist. I contend that this remains a non-trivial distinction.

Nobody apart from Andrew Symonds heard him say it. Nobody apart from Andrew Symonds was able to recall a single other word that Harbhajan Singh supposedly said to Symonds. So it is far from clear as to whether or not the offending term was actually used. So, maybe Ponting and co. might want to be more humble about their righteous claims.

The Dada Distraction

Kartikeya Date — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:58:00 -0400

Sourav Ganguly announced this morning that he would retire from Test Cricket at the end of this Australian tour. This news comes at the worst possible time for India, and yet it has Sourav Ganguly's signature stamped all over it. It is hard not to see immediate parallels between Steve Waugh's announcement just before India's 2003-04 tour of Australia. The tour quickly became one long farewell tour for Waugh, and some have suggested that this hurt Australia.

Sourav Ganguly has been an exasperating figure. He is probably India's best left handed batsman ever, and yet, for almost half of his Test Match career, was basically carried by the Indian batting line up. He averaged 34 with the bat in Test Cricket as captain against the other seven top Test playing nations (basically, in Test matches not featuring Bangladesh and Zimbabwe).

He was invariably involved in taking brilliant catches, and making clutch stops in high pressure situations in ODI games, and yet, the rest of the time was less than adequate as a fielder. He was an aggressive figure, who was also a fairly conservative tactician. He was a great fighter, who also allegedly feigned injury against Australia at Nagpur.

And yet, he was an endearing figure. His was a polarizing presence, but he was always squarely in India's corner. He was exactly the sort of captain India needed after the disastrous depths of the match-fixing scandal.

Apart from his brilliant batting as a One Day International opening batsman in the first half of his career, Ganguly's greatest contribution was his ability harness some talent (which he was lucky to have, thanks to a reasonable group of selectors), and get India's cricket watching public to believe in its cricket team again. That is going to be his singular legacy.

The announcement of his departure has been characteristically ham handed. There was no reason to announce this right now. It seems to have come about as an afterthought, what with the "One last thing lads" preamble. It was an important announcement.

Ganguly has had an fine career and the announcement should have been made properly and formally, not as a "oh and by the way" appendage. From the point of view of the India—Australia series, it could not have come at the worse time, two days before the series begins, virtually tying the selectors hands for the rest of the series.

The proper way for Ganguly to have announced his retirement, one worthy of a player of his stature, would have been to announce it on the eve of the Nagpur Test match, with the Chairman of Selectors by his side in a full fledged press conference. That would have been the serious, well thought out way of doing it.

Ganguly leaves himself open to criticism that he made this adhoc announcement to avoid being dropped in case he doesn't perform in the first two Tests.

For his sake, and for India's sake, I hope he makes lots of runs in this series. With Australia's bowling being what it is, he wont have a better chance to improve his record against Australia at home (383 runs at 27.35 with a highest of 66).

A more substantive appreciation of Sourav Ganguly is most certainly in order, but that will have to wait until he actually retires. For now, all i will hope for is that Sourav Ganguly's final Test series does not end up like Steve Waugh's final Test series—a valedictory tour full of missteps. I hope Ganguly gets rousing ovations in all the four Test Matches, but I hope he won't feel slighted if the applause is not quite on the Steve Waugh scale.

This announcement right now is a mistake in my view. It is also typical Sourav Ganguly.

Guru Greg Consults for the Aussie Cricket Side

Kartikeya Date — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:55:00 -0400

Australia have hired Greg Chappell as an assistant coach for their tour of India. Guru Greg is still hated in India, mainly for speaking his mind and being impatient with the rubbish that the press kept dishing out to him.

His time as the head coach of the Indian Cricket Team was a tumultous period with some rousing victories and some terrible defeats. He left in sad circumstances, unworthy of the great cricketer that he was in his playing days.

As this Indian Express editorial suggests, Chappell may have moved on, but some in India clearly haven't. This ridiculous editorial opines that Australia hiring Chappell amounts to a mind game! This India-Centric view that anything that happens in the world of cricket is primarily with reference to India is indicative of an unhealthy amount of hubris amongst some people who participate in Indian Cricket.

Australia are not "manic about mindgames". How about the simpler, more decent explanation, that they would like to be prepared as well as they can be, and feel that Greg Chappell with his close experience of India and the Indian team, can help their preperation?

In my view, that's a solid reason hire anybody, especially if you have the budget to do it. The irony of the Express editorial is that in issuing some sort of false warning, it falls prey to the same mindgames which it claims the Australians are playing! The justification given in the editorial is weak.

I would counter by asking what it is that anybody can teach Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, or Anil Kumble about playing anywhere in the world, that they don't already know? What can Gary Kirsten teach India's cricketers about playing in India? Besides, I have no idea what the IPL experience has to do with proper Test Cricket.

That this is much ado about nothing is evident from the closing line: "When a man once picked by India for acclimatisation to the Australian way is, in turn, picked by Australia to know the India way, cricket has to be at an interesting juncture." There is no great insight here. That statement as such is hollow and means absolutely nothing.

The fact that the Australians have hired Chappell, is in my view entirely unexceptional. I don't recall the Australians getting all twisted about India hiring Greg Chappell to coach them, or hiring Bruce Reid as a bowling consultant in Australia in 2003-04, or even hiring Chappell himself as a batting consultant in Australia in 2003-04.

Both Reid and Chappell proved to be very useful for India on that tour. Chappell might prove to be equally useful this time around, not least because, whatever any upstart might say about him, he was a truly great batsman in his day and obvious really knows his cricket.

You could also argue that the one thing that Chappell couldn't manage in India was the transition to the post-Ganguly era. Given that Chappell himself sees this as a transition period for Australia, there is a possibility that Chappell's questionable man-management skills might lead to some tactless handling of some situations by him, which may haunt Cricket Australia for this choice.

If an Indian editorial suggested this, it would be a classic Australian style mindgame. But, as you can see, they haven't.

I actually think this appointment is as unremarkable as it is sound. Chappell has recently been appointed head of the Centre for Excellence in Brisbane. The current Australian Coach Tim Nielsen held this position before he became Head Coach of the Australian team. As such, Chappell and Nielsen are the two top Cricket coaches in Australia right now.

Given how important this series is, and given how so many Australian players have not toured India before, but have probably been to the Centre for Excellence, inviting Chappell to tour with the Australian team for this tour makes a lot of sense. Tim Nielsen toured with John Buchanan when Buchanan was coach.

This is the build-up though. It is true that the Australian press tries very hard to soften up visiting teams to Australia even before they take the field. This is something of an Australian tradition, which goes back at least 60 years if not more (Len Hutton and Colin Cowdrey have both written about Hutton's encounters with the Australian press when he led England to Australia for the 1954-55 Ashes).

If the Indian press wants to do the same, they ought pursue such an enterprise seriously. Editorials like this one from the Indian Express are neither here nor there.

Moral Victories: Re-Thinking the Draw

Kartikeya Date — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:26:00 -0400

As the Nissar Trophy game moves into its third day, Delhi have more or less overcome the advantage of having a conceded a 132 run first innings deficit to the visitors SNGPL. Virat Kohli continued his good form to reach 91 not out to add to his 52 in the first innings as Delhi reached 1/242 (Akash Chopra 93*, Sehwag 37) after having dismissed the SNGPL lineup for 266 in their first innings.

The highlight of Day One was a lower middle-order hat trick by 27-year-old Imran Ali. He took 6/52 in the Delhi first innings, and was aided by his opening partner Asad Ali who took 3/32. Delhi were bowled out for 134. Ashish Nehra was amongst the wickets when Delhi bowled, but Ishant Sharma had an expensive opening spell.

It is interesting to see that the Delhi pacemen go for about four runs per over in the SNGPL first innings. Delhi have since responded by scoring at nearly five an over in the third innings of the match.

The game seems to be evenly poised at the moment. We have little to go on in this, the first game of the season. Early season wickets can be a tad unreliable. Even though SNGPL have to bat fourth, Delhi will feel more comfortable if they are able to declare and set a target for SNGPL, rather than being bowled out.

If you look at the history of Test Cricket, sides which declare and set fourth innings targets have almost never lost Test matches—not unless the targets were set by a desperate side which was behind in the series. In the first innings, Delhi collapsed from 2/90 to 10/134. It remains unclear whether this was merely a one-off or whether it indicates a clear gulf in quality between the first four, and the other seven (all of whom are regular Delhi players but have never seriously threatened the Indian batting line up).

SNGPL have to bat last, and while that may not matter as much on Day Three and Day Four as it does in a Test match (on the fifth afternoon say), Delhi have a fairly good pace attack. Time is also a factor in this game. With six sessions of play left, and given the fact that 74 overs were possible on Day One, while the full 90 overs were played on Day Two, Delhi will have to account for possible stoppages due to bad weather in assessing their declaration and/or scoring rate.

The rules of the Nissar Trophy are not clear, but if it is awarded on first innings basis, then Delhi will have to force an outright win from here. The fact that they didn't lose a wicket just before the end of play on Day Two may prove to be more important than we might think if they go on to win.

A word about the coverage. It is striking to me that Cricinfo is providing live commentary of the One Day triangular series between India A, New Zealand A and Australia A, but not of this Nissar Trophy game featuring Sehwag and Misbah and Ishant Sharma.

Do you seriously think that viewers in India are more interested in Australia A v New Zealand A? I suspect that it is indicative of the almost reflexive judgement that four day games are boring, while limited overs games are not. The Nissar Trophy certainly did not suffer from a lack of star power.

The usual reason for this is that four day games last four days, and there is still no guarantee of a result. This argument is a stupid one (thats the best and most appropriate way of putting it), obviously there is the guarantee of a result, it is just much more intelligent and sophisticated than mere winning and losing.

The Draw is the most interesting result in all of sport, precisely because it does not suggest that both teams were equally good in the game. It says that the one side was better than the other, just not sufficiently better to be declared a winner. So a four day game between teams A and B can actually have six possible results:

1. Team A wins

2. Team A better than team B, but not enough to win

3. Team A and Team B both equally placed

4. Team B better than team A, but not enough to win

5. Team B wins

6. Team A and Team B tie.

The third result and the sixth result in that list is the rarest of the six possible results, and not surprisingly, these two results are the ones which indicate equality.

This is also why I disagree with artificial agreements about declaring the winner on the first innings to be the winner. Apart from reducing the incentive for the side with the first innings lead to play for the outright win (especially in knock out games like semi-finals, or in this Nissar Trophy game), it also renders all the cricket that is played after the first innings are completed to be irrelevant, as long as the side leading on the first innings does not go on to lose the game.

A better way would be to measure the state of the game after every delivery and offer points in league games like the Ranji Trophy super-league based on the six possible results listed above.

The points system could still be suitably biased in favor of outright wins. This will ensure that there will be no nonsense spouted about moral victories. A possible points distribution could be

1. Outright win - W:5, L:0

2. Being ahead in the game at the end W - 3, L: 1

3. Being dead even (draw) - W: 3, L: 3

4. Tie - both sides get 4 points.

In most games, distributions (1) or (2) would apply. This is probably how most games end. I wonder how Test Cricketers may see this.

Sri Lanka Clinch Series

Kartikeya Date — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:11:00 -0400

Sri Lanka won the third and final test at Colombo by eight wickets to clinch the three test series against India, repeating their performance from 2001. India lost this Test Match on the first innings, despite having had the benefit of winning the toss.

Looking back, it is hard to name any one factor which was the difference between the two sides. But if one were to insist on pointing something out, it would be that the Sri Lankan bowling had an enormous edge, in terms of two astonishingly good spin bowlers, both of whom could turn the ball both ways.

I don't remember the last time a Test team could boast such a spin attack. Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed for a brief period after Saqlain had perfected his doosra and Mushtaq was still a force to reckon with come close, but even then it was mainly conventional spin.

It is a measure of the resurgence of spin bowling that the doosra is now considered a conventional delivery, and most international batsmen pick it.

What is most stunning about Ajantha Mendis is his temperament. That he is able to call upon all his variations at will, and yet bowl with an excellent line and length is very impressive.

He seems to know at what pace he should bowl, at least in Sri Lanka. His great Test will come when he goes overseas, where his variations might not turn as much, and hence the pressure on him to beat the batsman in flight will be much greater.

But what a beginning! It is safe to say that Mendis is easily the most impressive bowler to have arrived on the scene in recent memory. With Murali at the other end, he could not ask for a better cushion from which to launch a career which will threaten all of Murali's records, wherever Murali ends up.

India's spin attack had a touch of predictability to it, even though both spinners bowled well. The difference was that Mendis and Murali were able to attack the stumps at all times, while Harbhajan Singh was bowling for caught dismissals, especially against the Sri Lanka left handers

This is mostly because the Indian spinners are well known around the world, and there is hardly a batsman around who has not faced them for a longish period of time.

Anil Kumble has dismissed 364 different batsmen in Test Cricket (Murali has dismissed 392 for his 756 Test Wickets). This terrific Sri Lankan spin attack meant that unless the Indian new ball pair had a match-winning series, India would have almost no chance of winning.

As it turned out, Murali (21 wickets at 22.23) and Mendis (26 wickets at 18.38) out-bowled Harbhajan Singh (16 wickets at 28.12) and Kumble (eight wickets at 50).

Not only that, Vaas, who had a modest series with the ball, still ended up with five wickets at 44. This compares reasonably with Zaheer Khan's eight wickets at 44 and is only slightly worse that Ishant Sharm's six wickets a 35.50.

The batting of the two sides, in the final analysis, was not that far apart. Five of the Sri Lankan top six average 40 or more in the series, while three of the Indian top six managed the same.

Rahul Dravid showed some signs of revival towards the end of the series, while Tendulkar didn't get a score in six attempts despite looking untroubled for the most part.

When you consider that he reached 50 in the first innings in each Test Match in Australia (an unrivalled feat for a visiting batsman there in a series of three tests or more), Tendulkar's show was disappointing.

Sourav Ganguly's show was even more disappointing because he didn't look like getting a big score until the last innings. He kept getting beaten in the flight by Murali, something which points to slowing reflexes (something which is true of all four in Indian middle order).

This series will give the Selectors some food for thought. It remains to be seen if they are able to replicate their masterly management of the transition in the ODI side in the Test Team.

The ODI team (minus Tendulkar who has been ruled out thanks to the elbow injury he suffered in the third test) faces its sternest examination yet—facing Sri Lanka and Mendis in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka are a tough Test team in Sri Lanka, but as an ODI side they are a truly great team at home.

They have a 50-15 record in Sri Lanka in this decade, and if you remove the Minnow games they still have a 36-15 record against the other seven top Test playing nations (Bangladesh and Zimbabwe excluded).

With Mendis and Murali in their ranks, the Sri Lankan ODI side has just gained another dimension. This will be Dhoni's greatest Test, made that much more difficult due to Tendulkar's absence.

A rout is not out of the question in the ODI series. The Test series has not proved to be a rout only because the Indian Test team is basically a high quality (if aging) side. I suspect that Sourav Ganguly will be the first of the old guard to be left out of the Test team.

It's that time again...

India v. Sri Lanka: A First Test Review

Kartikeya Date — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:18:00 -0400

India are 8/121 in their second innings at the Sinhalese Sports Club as I write this post and are sliding toward a thumping innings defeat, much like they did the last time they played a Test match in Sri Lanka.

They have been thoroughly out-thought and outclassed. The out-thinking bit was easy for Sri Lanka, for while they play classical Test Cricket, and did several basic things right after winning a fairly important toss, India seem to have gone into the game with a muddled mind.

The Sri Lankan spin attack is easily the best seen in recent times, operating in conditions favorable to them, with the crushing weight of 600 runs delivered by the Sri Lankan batsmen. This Test Match, which Sri Lanka will in all probability win today, has revealed a greater gulf between the two sides than Ajanta Mendis.

Sri Lanka have shown better awareness of situations in the match—situation described by what the bowler is trying to do, what the field setting is, what the score is, what the batsman at the other end is doing, etc. It has been a Test Match between one side playing Test cricket, and another playing, apart from a few stray batsmen, playing blind man's bluff.

Rahul Dravid was well and truly beaten by the spinners in both innings. Tendulkar's first innings dismissal was understandable, but his second innings dismissal was, like many other things, reflective of India's thinking (or lack thereof) during this Test Match.

Consider the choice he made—to sweep Muralitharan bowling at him from round the wicket into the rough, with a leg slip present, following on, facing a deficit of 300 odd runs. In the end, he was dismissed to a ball which would have missed leg stump by a foot. It was an entirely avoidable dismissal and seems to be an even more tragic choice of shot given the fact that Tendulkar played both Mendis and Murali quite well.

The best Indian batsman was VVS Laxman. Once the gamble to promote him to No. 3 failed, India was as good as beaten.

India's batsmen face plenty of problems here. They are faced with an extremely intelligent spin bowling attack—one which knows its home conditions inside out. They are unable to read one of the spinners.

What's more, some of them seem to be down on confidence and match play. The middle order is coming into this series cold. One of the openers is making a comeback, and the other refuses to use his brains.

All that said, these are not India's biggest problems. The batsmen (one has to hope) will figure things out. The bigger problem seems to be the spinners. The Indian spinners never looked like getting a wicket when the Sri Lankans batted.

More than Kumble, Harbhajan seems to be struggling. I cannot remember the last time he bowled with any success in a Test Match. He seems distracted and has lost the accuracy and control of length which marked his bowling when he was at his best.

Unless India can threaten the Sri Lankan batting and keep Sri Lankan totals within manageable proportions, even the best batsmen in the world at their best won't be able to keep Murali and Mendis at bay on wearing wickets.

India have been out-classed by an accomplished Sri Lankan outfit. What's more, India aren't thinking straight at the moment. Gary Kirsten has plenty to think about.

Sri Lanka vs. India, Day Two

Kartikeya Date — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:19:00 -0400

It was Sri Lanka's day at the Sinhalese Sports Club today. At 422/4 they hold the upper hand in this game. It is fast approaching a stage where only Sri Lanka can realistically push for a victory.

The wicket is quite slow at the moment, but Muralitharan will extract much more turn off the wicket than Kumble and Harbhajan.The referral farce was played out again in the dying minutes of the day. This time it basically amounted to Harbhajan Singh and Dinesh Karthik's judgment (from extremely poor positions) against Mark Benson's.

It's a terrible idea, and gets worse with time, mainly because it is structurally flawed. I have posted more detailed assessments of the Referral system here and here.

India failed to make a breakthrough in the morning session, and that seemed to seal their fate for the rest of the day. The Indian bowling had an element of predictability about it.

Teams all over the world have basically figured out how to play Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh now. Unless there is something exceptional in the wicket, or the batsmen become overly ambitious, or Kumble and Harbhajan bowl exceptionally well and have a lucky day where great catches are held and every good appeal is upheld, they are not going to run through lineups on good wickets.

The slow wicket negated Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan even though both toiled manfully. If any criticism at all may be offered of either, it would be that they tried too many things too often.

I wonder how Sri Lanka would have responded had Zaheer or Ishant bowled outside offstump on a bloody minded good length to an 8-1 field or a 7-2 field and basically ignored the stumps? A drop in the run rate might have brought about an interesting situation.

As it happened, Sri Lanka made 2/337 from 98 overs on the day. The absence of a fifth bowler hurt India.

Weather permitting, Sri Lanka should have enough time to win. Before this game, they have made 400 or more batting first in a Test Match in Sri Lanka 10 times, and won seven of those games. They have never lost a Test Match at home after making 400 or more batting first.

Of the three drawn games, two were severely affected by rain.

Indias' batsmen have their work cut out for them.

India Contains Sri Lanka in Day One of Test Series

Kartikeya Date — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:20:00 -0400

The Test Series between India and Sri Lanka got off to a rain-affected beginning at the Sinhalese Sports Club ground in Colombo yesterday.

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bat on a dry wicket, which was expected to take turn earlier than usual. The persistent rain in Colombo has meant that the wicket has been under wraps since Sunday, and may not in fact have been watered since then.

This will suit Sri Lanka, who have the weaker pace attack, but arguably the stronger spin attack.

Mutthaih Muralitharan remains unrivalled as a spin bowler in Sri Lanka (451 Test wickets in 68 home Tests over 16 years—a bradmanesque statistic), while the Sri Lankans have done better against Anil Kumble than almost any other side.

The day began with the in-experienced Sri Lankan pair of Warnapura and Vandort facing up to Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma. Vandort looked more solid than Warnapura initially, until he chased a wickedly rising delivery from Ishant and Dinesh Karthik completed an tricky catch. Sri Lanka were one down.

The Warnapura-Zaheer contest was an intriguing one, and it will be especially interesting to watch it play out Thursday. Warnapura is a typical sub-continental batsman—brutal off the frontfoot, with an almost pathological preference for it.

He tended to commit himself to the frontfoot quite early, and Zaheer, having detected this in about 3-4 balls, seemed to sense an easy kill. At that point, Zaheer went berserk against Warnapura, subjecting the Sri Lankan southpaw to a barrage of short pitched bowling, which, if it had been perfectly directed, might have been lethal.

The wicket was not especially quick though, and once Warnapura became attuned to Zaheer's methods, he seemed to play him without too much trouble. Warnapura, in the end, proved to be a deceptively tough nut to crack.

Ishant Sharma toiled manfully on heartbreaking wicket for him and got the odd ball to rise sharply. Both Zaheer and Ishant, however, seemed intent on bowling to a plan rather than going flat out. Given that India are playing only two pacemen, this is a prudent ploy.

So far, in the brief period of play that we have seen, India have bowled reasonably well, although they have conceded about 20 runs more than they would have liked to concede.

Harbhajan Singh, in the solitary over that he bowled, was unable to hit a length. He has been in poor form for a while, and unless he can find new wind from somewhere, India's four-bowler ploy (with Bhajji as one of the four) may come back to haunt them.

Early wickets are an absolute must for India, especially given the lack of depth in their bowling line up.

Sanjay Manjrekar thinks India are the better team, but it will ultimately come down to the age-old question—Can India bowl out the opposition twice? In this, India have some convincing to do.

Of Risks and Odds in Test Cricket

Kartikeya Date — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:41:00 -0400

South Africa and England went into this Test Series equally matched. England had a slight edge in the batting department, while the South African bowling line up has shown explosive form in the last eight to ten months.

With the return of Andrew Flintoff, the English bowling attack was definitely bolstered in the Leeds Test, but this was offset somewhat by absence of the in form Ryan Sidebottom. Overall, it would be fair to say that on paper, this was a series between two well-matched sides.

The visitors' lead is somewhat surprising given England's recent Test Match results in New Zealand and then in the home series against New Zealand. Their batting line up is more settled than at any time in recent memory (even during the 2005 Ashes, Ian Bell's slot was still uncertain).

Yet, the South Africans have outbatted and outbowled them at Leeds. The visitors began the series tentatively. Graeme Smith made an ill-fated decision to field first at Lord's and spent the next two days in the field as England romped to a first innings of nearly 600.

The South African pacemen looked out of sorts on the first morning when the wicket and the conditions were at their most helpful. They survived at Lord's thanks to their batsmen and a wicket which England did not have the means to exploit. A good second spinner to assist Panesar would have come in handy for England at Lord's.

The reason why South Africa find themselves ahead today is because they have played better Test Cricket. What I mean by this is that they have shown better awareness of the demands of Test Match play. Their batsmen have been willing to graft and work hard for their runs, allowing their bowling the time it needed get it right.

It started with McKenzie and Smith who played superbly according to the situation of the game at Lord's. Smith scored his runs faster than McKenzie, but the caution was evident in his play. McKenzie seems to be temperamentally well suited to the long haul and took to the Lord's situation like a duck to water.

England have some right to feel that the rub of the green did not go their way in South Africa's first innings in the Leeds test, but how many times have we seen the side which gets it right most of the time get all the breaks? How many times have we seen Glenn McGrath for example have edges carry to lone slips, while lesser bowlers have their stray edges streak between slip and gully?

At the end of the day, this phenomenon is easily explained by way of odds. McGrath is likely to get his man more often than a less accurate bowler, because he is likely to create an edge inducing more often than a less accurate bowler.

The art in Test Cricket at the end of the day, is about judging risks. Every player who plays at the Test level is aware of basic batting technique, and all bowlers get sorted out with time. Mystery and brilliance rarely win Test Matches, and the advantage of these is always temporary.

By creating a finely balanced contest between bat and ball, where each has a stake, and where a certain basic quality is required of each, an episodic battle ensues marked by shifting risks and odds. If you look at the batting averages of the English and South African batsmen in this series, you will find that England's batsmen have scored quicker than South Africa's batsmen.

The South Africans have showed a greater ability to graft and bide their time. For most of their first innings in the Leeds Test, they were scoring at less than three runs per over. The runs flowed only after South Africa had put the first innings beyond doubt.

What makes Test Cricket such an intriguing spectacle is that different players have different basic tendencies—some are more aggressive than others, some favor certain wickets more than others, some favor certain types of bowling more than others. These individual tendencies of a batsman do play a role in how he assesses risk.

The "natural game" which everybody keeps touting is almost always only half the story. Often a player going off the boil and experiencing a lean run, is basically assessing the risk wrongly, or is not assessing it very well (on account of form, technical problems etc.).

In this light, it will be interesting to watch India play Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka in the coming weeks. The presence of Ajantha Mendis makes for an interesting battle, especially if Mendis shows himself capable of handling the rigors of Test Cricket.

That the first Test is to be played at the Sinhalese Sports Club, where the wicket has traditionally offered some assistance to the medium-fast men makes it even more interesting. Will the Indian batsmen choose to go after Mendis, match situation permitting, if the wicket doesn't assist spin bowling too much?

Or will they choose to use the easier (likely to be) wicket to have a good look at him in view of the tougher battles to come? Will Sri Lanka field Mendis at all if the wicket is likely to be a particularly true one?

With Vaas and Kulasekara likely to open the Sri Lankan bowling, it looks as though they lack depth in the pace department, given the injury to Farveez Maharoof. India hold a slight edge in the pace stakes with Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma leading their new ball attack.

Much like the current England v South Africa series, the Sri Lanka v India Series will be won by the side which is able to play according to the match situation better. Between two evenly matched sides, it is always the more professional side, which makes fewer unforced errors, which wins.

Recent history suggests that Sri Lanka are extremely good at playing solid professional cricket, even if they may not be able to match the outrageous brilliance of a Sehwag. India's recent Test Match success has been due to the fact that they have played solid percentage cricket quite well. Their fortunes in Sri Lanka will depend on whether they are able to continue that trend.

Bowlers also deal with odds in Test Cricket, but in a different way as compared to batsmen, because bowlers "make the play" in a sense. A batsman can only play the ball based on the line and length that the bowler delivers. The essence of good line and length is to find one where the batsman finds it difficult to get into good position to play the ball.

The "good length" of course is one which is too short for the batsman to play forward, yet too full for him to play back. A "good line" is one which the batsman cannot leave with any confidence, while at the same time causing him to debate whether or not he needs to play. If a bowler is able to bowl a good line and length for a given wicket and given conditions and a given batsman's strengths and weaknesses consistently enough, his chances of inducing a fatal error of judgement from the batsman increase.

Anil Kumble made a telling point while discussing his newly developed googly a few years ago. He said "They pick it, but they still have to play it"—his point being, its still a well-pitched delivery. Occasionally a bowler will try a high risk delivery—like a widish half volley as a bait or a yorker or a bouncer, both of which could cost the bowler plenty of runs if he gets them even slightly wrong.

Successful Test sides are invariably masters at playing these odds and judging these risks. Thats what enables a side like South Africa, which cannot match the exceptional talents of Pietersen, Vaughan and Flingtoff, to beat England. That they have done so in England, is even more creditable. If anything, India have an even tougher assignment in Sri Lanka.

This is a good time if you're a fan of Test Cricket.